Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

 Year:  1922

Director:  F. W. Murnau

Screenplay:  Henrik Galeen, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

Starring:  Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach, Ruth Landschoff, Wolfgang Heinz

Running Time:  84 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Wisborg, 1838:  Young clerk Hutter (von Wangenheim) is sent by his sinister boss, Knock (Granach), to a remote castle high in the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania to negotiate the purchase of a house by the mysterious nobleman Count Orlok (Schreck).  Hutter soon discovers the horrific truth that Count Orlok is a blood-thirsty vampire or nosferatu.

This classic silent horror film is technically the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's famous novel Dracula.  However the adaptation was unauthorised and unofficial.  The filmmakers approached Stoker's widow, Florence Stoker, for the rights to adapt the film, but they decided that they couldn't afford the price she was asking, and so they just decided to go ahead anyway.  When Florence Stoker found out, she was furious, and sued the filmmakers, bankrupting the studio, with the court ordering all copies of the film to be destroyed.  However it had already been exported internationally and some prints resurfaced in France and the United States.  The film is one of the most influential horror films ever made.  While not as heavily stylised as the surreal dreamscape of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), it is part of the German Expressionist movement, in which the character's inner worlds are reflected in the outer world.  Viewed today, it does suffer from overly melodramatic acting, as well as director F. W. Murnau's decision to use sped-up motion in scenes such as the carriage driving through the forest, and Orlok loading his coffins into a cart.  Murnau, apparently thought that sped-up motion was scary, but today it looks more comical than anything else, although at this point cinema was still very new and was still trying to find it's own language and style.   In fact some of Murnau's innovations work very well, for example the novel Dracula is told through diaries, journals, newspaper cuttings, and so on, and Murnau carefully designed the intertitles of the film himself to replicate the pages of old books and documents.  Despite being 100 years old, the film is still hugely effective, and is still one of the greatest vampire films ever made.  The vampire in Nosferatu is based on the traditional European folkloric vampire, as a hideous reanimated corpse rather than a suave lounge lizard in evening dress.  Max Schreck makes an indelible impression as Count Orlok, a cadaverous figure incased in black, his hands as grotesque talons, bat-like ears, bald, with a pinched face and sharp, rodent-like fangs.  The vampire is explicitly connected with disease, arriving in the town of Wisborg, accompanied by hordes of rats, and bringing the plague.  Schreck's portrayal was so convincing that there were rumours at the time that he really was a vampire.  The rumour inspired its own film Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a fictionalised version of the filming of Nosferatu starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe.  The film contains some unforgettable images, such as Orlok on the death ship; the shadow of the vampire creeping up the stairs towards his victim; and also the climax where the vampire is dissolved by the rays of the sun.  Possibly the film's biggest contribution to vampire lore is the idea of the vampire being destroyed by sunlight.  In Dracula, the vampire is weakened by sunlight, but it is not lethal.    Nosferatu was remade in 1979 as Nosferatu the Vampyr, written and directed by Werner Herzog, with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, and another remake is set for release in 2024.  Although originating as an unauthorised adaptation of a popular novel, Nosferatu has grown beyond its origins, casting an indelible shadow that lingers to this day.

Max Schreck as Count Orlok in Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
     

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Year of Release:  2014
Director:  Ana Lily Amirpour
Screenplay:  Ana Lily Amirpour
Starring:  Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Mozhan Marno, Marshall Manesh, Dominic Rains
Running Time:  101 minutes
Genre:  Horror, drama

In a bleak Iranian city, Arash (Marandi) works hard to take care of his heroin-addicted father (Manesh), and trying to survive the daily grind of crime and misery that surrounds him.  However, the local drug dealers and pimps are being stalked by a mysterious woman (Vand), who is, in fact, a vampire.

The vampire film genre often seems to have been played out, however there are occasional films such as this one that show there is still life in it yet.  A kind of neo-noir, vampire Western, this is an Iranian language film, that is set in Iran, although it is an American film and was shot in California.  It looks gorgeous, filmed in crisp monochrome.  Writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour described the film as "the lovechild of Sergio Leone and David Lynch, babysat by Nosferatu", and it certainly has a very Lynchian flavour to it.  The film hasn't much of a plot, it's more about atmosphere, and it does have a strange dreamlike quality, which makes it more haunting than frightening.   It's one of those films where whatever time of the day you watch it, it feels like three in the morning.  Swathed in a black chador, Sheila Vand is great as the unnamed, enigmatic vampire, both terrifying and alluring at the same time, she has a real otherworldly quality.  There is a strong feminist theme, the vampire usually preying upon men she witnesses abusing or disrespecting women.    The events take place against the backdrop of a gritty backdrop of drugs and crime, where vampires are probably far from the worst thing out there.

 Sheila Vand in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Vampyr

Director:  Carl Theodor Dreyer
Screenplay:  Christen Jul and Carl Theodor Dreyer, based on the short story collection In a Glass Darkly by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Starring:  Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Jan Hieronimko, Sybille Schmitz, Henriette Gerard
Genre:  Horror, vampire
Running Time:  75 minutes

This interesting movie is less of a conventional horror movie and more of a surrealistic art film.  The film concerns student and occultist Allan Gray (West) who travels to a remote, rural inn where he encounters an elderly man (Schutz) who, along with his two daughters Gisele (Mandel) and Leone (Schmitz), is being preyed upon by an evil vampire.

For the most part the film doesn't really make much sense, being a succession of dream-like or nightmarish images, such as inexplicable shadows, ghostly figures, and a weird fuzzy looking picture (which was apparently due to a light accidentally "fogging" one of the takes.  Dreyer liked the effect and decided to use it throughout the film).  Interestingly the film focuses almost entirely on the victims of the vampire, with the creature itself being notable mainly by it's absence for most of the film.  This was Dreyer's first sound film and was recorded in three languages.  Due to this Dreyer uses hardly any dialogue, and the version I saw was, in fact, a silent version with a score by Steven Severin  (founder member of Siouxsie and the Banshees).

Many viewers today may find the film frustrating.  It is slow, and a lot of what happens in the film doesn't make much sense and there isn't much in the way of conventional thrills or frights.  However, for those who go along with it and get themselves drawn into the movies hallucinatory world, may find themselves rewarded with a truly unforgettable experience.   

A typically creepy image from Vampyr 

Near Dark

Year: 1987
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Screenplay: Eric Red and Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Janette Goldstein, Tim Thomerson, Joshua Miller, Marcie Leeds
Running Time: 95 minutes
Genre: Horror, action, supernatural

Summary: Oklahoma: One night Caleb Cotton (Pasdar) meets Mae (Wright), an attractive young drifter. There is a real attraction between them and, after some flirting, he tries to kiss her, but instead she bites his neck and runs off. Caleb starts to feel severely sick, and the sun causes his flesh to smoke and burn. As he heads home to his vetinerian father, Loy (Thomerson) and young sister Sarah (Leeds), Caleb is abducted by Mae's "family" who turn out to be a nomadic band of vampires who travel around in stolen cars and mobile homes searching for blood and trying desperately to stay one step ahead of the law and the daylight. The group is led by the charismatic Jessie Hooker (Henriksen) and his "wife" Diamondback (Goldstein), and is also made up of the callous psychopath Severen (Paxton), and Homer (Miller), who is forver trapped in the body of a child, at odds with his adult mind and drives.
Caleb tries to fit in with the group, who give him a week to prove that he deserves to be among them, or they will kill him, while Loy and Sarah travel the South in a desperate bid to rescue him.

Opinions: This film is a very effective blend of action and vampire horror. The film was originally intended by Bigelow to be a revisionist Western, but she found it diffcult to get financing for a Western movie (at that time the genre, unlike vampires, was calmly resting in peace), however, mixing it with a more commerical genre made it a far more palatable prospect for investors.
The movie, however, was a commercial failure. It was released in summer 1987 at the same time as the more comedy oriented The Lost Boys, which was far more successful and has a very similar plot.
However, reviews were strong, and this has grown into quite a major cult film. The film is beautifully shot with some impressive panoramas of the desert landscapes and glittering night-time images that evoke the romance of the vampire lifestyle. The vampires themselves are well handled. Far from the glamorous, sexy vampires that have always been so popular, these ones are grimy, dirty and perpetual outsiders. Despite some of the horrible things that they do, the vampires become weirdly likeable and almost sympathetic. Their murderous ways are more or less enforced on them by their condition, and they also genuinely care about each other. Ultimately the film is about family, the conflict between the "bad" family (the vampires) and the "good" family (Caleb's sister and father) for Caleb's soul.
Kathryn Bigelow is a brilliant action movie director and she handles the action sequences here expertly, giving them a genuine sense of excitement. The film is also well-paced. It moves fast and is empty of all unessentials. Exciting, tense and, at times, genuinely scary, this is one of the best vampire movies of the 1980s.
In one scene Caleb walks past a cinema marquee advertising Aliens (1986). Lance Henriksen, Janette Goldstein and Bill Paxton all appeared in Aliens and Kathryn Bigelow was later married to the film's director James Cameron.

"Howdy. I'm gonna seperate your head from your shoulders. Hope you don't mind none."
- Severen (Bill Paxton) makes new friends in Near Dark



Bill Paxton and Adrian Pasdar stop for a drink in Near Dark

Let Me In

Year: 2010
Director: Matt Reeves
Screenplay: Matt Reeves, based on the novel and screenplay Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Cara Buono
Running Time: 116 minutes
Genre: Horror, drama

Summary: In March, 1983, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, twelve year old Owen (Smit-McPhee) lives with his religious, alcoholic mother (Buono), who largely ignores him, on a depressing housing estate. He is also frequenty bullied at school. One night he meets a new neighbour, Abby (Moretz), a seemingly ordinary twelve year old girl, who lives with an elderly man (Jenkins) assumed to be her father. A strong friendship soon blossoms between Owen and Abby until he learns that Abby is, in fact, a vampire, and her "father" is behind a brutal series of ritualistic killings in the local area which he has done to provide her with the blood she needs.

Opinions: The 2004 novel Let the Right One In by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist has previously been adapted as a critically acclaimed and successful Swedish film directed by Tomas Alfredson, and now an English-language version has been made. It's hard not to feel cynical when a successful foreign language film is given an English-language remake, especially when it's only been a couple of years since the release of the Swedish film. In fact, Alfredson was, understandably, very angry at the news that his film was being remade on the grounds that he thought a film should only be remade if there was something wrong with the original and he didn't think that there was anything wrong ith his film, and he is perfectly correct that there is nothing wrong with the earlier film.
However, leaving that aside, Let Me In is a very good film in it's own right. For the most part it sticks very closely to the earlier film and fairly faithful to the original novel (both movie versions excise the novel's gruesome zombie sub-plot). The film has a good sense of time and place with striking visuals of the snow-bathed housing estate. Director Reeves, best known for the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, delivers some striking scenes, in particular a sequence where the camera is in the back seat of a crashing car. He also has some of the more traditional horror movie scares happening in the background of scenes, and although there are computer generated special effects used, they are mostly fairly subtle. The movie's main strengths are in superb performances from Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz in the lead roles who make their characters if anything even more engaging and sympathetic then their Swedish counterparts.
While sticking a little bit too close to the original to really become it's own thing, this is a fine, well-made movie that deserves a wider audience than traditional horror audiences and should appeal to fans of the original as well as newcomers.


Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz in Let Me In

30 Days of Night

Year: 2007
Director: David Slade
Screenplay: Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, based on the comic book by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster, Manu Bennett, Mark Boone Junior and Mark Rendall
Running Time: 113 minutes
Genre: Horror, action, survival, vampire

Summary: The small town of Barrow, Alaska, is the northmost town in the United States and every year experiences thirty days of total, twenty-four hour darkness. On the last day of sunlight, while many of the residents leave the town to escape the month long night, the town experiences unusually severe occurances of vandalism as the town's power supply and communications are shut. Following a disruption in the local bar, the town's sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett) arrests a mysterious and violent stranger (Foster). Oleson is also surprised to discover that his estranged wife, Fire Marshal Stella (George), is trapped in the town after missing the last flight out. As soon as the darkness takes hold, the town is swept by a series of brutal murders. It turns out that they have been overrun by a tribe of vampires, led by the philosophical Marlow (Huston), who have been drawn to the town by the month of perpetual night. Soon, Oleson and Stella find themselves with a small group of survivors who have to survive thirty days in a small town overrun by hungry and unsleeping vampires.

Opinion: This movie is based on the three-issue comic-book miniseries 30 Days of Night, written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith, which was published in 2002 and subsequently followed by several sequels. The movie itself is fun if not particularly special, being very firmly in the "small group of people trapped and surrounded by evil" school of survival horror. The film's main twist on the vampire mythos is the fact that the humans are denied the one main advantage they have in other vampire stories i.e. the fact that vampires can only go out at night. Here there is only night. This makes the movie more similar to zombie movies such as Night of the Living Dead (1968). The film's main problem is that it lacks variety becoming stuck in a fomula (they go out, are attacked by vampires, they escape and go back), and the action, though well done, becomes repetitive, particularly in the middle on the film. The vampires in the film are interesting, they are much stronger and faster than humans and are very resiliant they are also given their own language. The movie is well performed by an effective cast and well directed by David Slade, who made his name with the controversial thriller Hard Candy (2005) and returned to the undead with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010).
The film was followed by a straight to DVD sequel called 30 Days of Night: Dark Days.

"When man meets a force he can't destroy, he destroys himself. What a plague you are."
- Marlow (Danny Huston), 30 Days of Night

Let the Right One In

Year: 2008
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Screenplay: John Ajvide Lindqvist based on his novel.
Starring: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Peter Carlberg and Ika Nord
Running Time: 114 minutes
Genre: Horror, vampire, romance, coming of age

Summary: Set in the Backeberg suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, in 1981, the film follows twelve year old Oskar (Hedebrant) a lonely boy who is frequently bullied by his classmates and bored with his life on a dull housing estate. One night he meets a mysterious girl named Eli (Leandersson) who lives next door to him with an older man, Hakan (Ragnar). As a friendship grows between them, Oskar discovers that Eli is in fact a 200 year old vampire who is forever trapped as a child and has a desperate thirst for human blood.

Opinions: This movie is based on the successful novel of the ame name by John Avijde Lindqvist and the film largely sticks very closely to the source material. The main differences are that several of the book's subplots have been cut from the film and a lot of elements have been heavily toned down, although none of the changes really affect the central storyline and are unlikely to bother most viewers. While the film has it's share of gore and violence it is by no means a gruesome or excessively violent film. It's really a character driven story about loneliness and friendship. The movie gets a lot of milage from the many snowbound icy landscapes it features (which is faithful to the imagery in the novel). The director, Tomas Alfredson, who was unfamiliar with horror and vampire films, handles the material well and stylishly with a good eye for detail and the minutiae and mundanity of everyday life which helps ground the supernatural elements in a recognisable reality, and makes it all the more effective. The acting, particularly from the two young leads, is really superb, with Lina Leandersson especially noteworthy making her pint sized blood-sucker both scary and sympathetic, often at the same time. Fans of the book will doubtless love the film, but it is good enough to transfer beyond the horror fans. Definitely recommended. Check it out.
An English language remake is on the way entitled Let Me In, directed by Michael Reeves (of Cloverfield fame) and starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz with the scene of the action shifted to New Mexico.